‘Join the funding party... early’

We invest on a cohort basis, which we call ‘class’; we invest as first institutional cheque writers. Our investments are made in instruments called iSafe — an Indianised version of safe notes. The firm is sector-agnostic and has invested ₹107.5 crore across 150 start-ups since inception in 2019. Typically, we invest in start-ups where dilution does not exceed 2-4 per cent. Although we have multiple parameters to assess a start-up, we predominantly assess the ability of the founder and the potential market size for the idea. 

In the early stage, fortunately, we are still seeing a lot of deal flow; it hasn’t reduced but is, rather, increasing every year. That’s also a function of the number of people from colleges and schools who are interested in start-ups. In terms of sectors, we think there is potential in agri-tech and deep-tech. The ever popular sectors such as fintech, health tech, SaaS [software as a service] and D2C [direct to consumer] continue to thrive, and we are getting a lot of pitches in these areas.

These are low-investment, high-risk, and potentially high-return bets; everyone with this appetite is coming to early stage. Our message to them is: ‘Join the party’. The big fund houses are entering this space because they realise the need to spot opportunities early on, before it’s too late. 

We are aiming to invest in 100 start-ups this year. It is a pretty tall target, not due to lack of deal flow but the process of mentoring them. However, we are confident. Our target is also to cover as many sectors as possible, so we can mitigate risk. We want to increase the share of under-represented sectors in our portfolio, such as agri-tech and deep-tech.